Dinara Kasko didn't set out to be a chef. She intended to be an architect. "But in Ukraine, it's not easy," she says. "Everything froze a few years ago" - at the outbreak of the war with Russia - "and there are not a lot of construction sites." So instead, Kasko turned her flair for constructing beguiling, intricate shapes to something smaller scale: desserts.

Kasko's designs - gravity-defying arcs, ultra-precise geometries, gelatinous spheres that fuse like neutron stars - are created with the help of some non-traditional kitchen tools. She uses software such as Houdini and Autodesk 3ds Max, before 3D-printing silicone moulds. "It can take two or three days to print my model," says Kasko, 28. The cakes are then baked and added to the mould, before spending two hours in a blast chiller to seal the shape. The result: puddings that look more suited for a Pritzker Architecture Prize than The Great British Bake Off.

Thanks to Instagram, Kasko's designs have attracted international attention; she's been invited to collaborate with acclaimed chefs from the US and Spain. She is now selling her moulds - mass-produced in China, rather than her Khirkov studio - to let bakers try their hand at home. It's the first step, she hopes, to starting her own design studio. But, she warns: beauty is only icing-deep. "The cakes look beautiful. But the most important thing is that our cake is tasty."

LIME-BASIL TRIANGULATION

Top layers:

Italian meringue with lime and basil; marshmallow-mousse

Bottom layers:

Lime and basil confit; sponge cake; crunchy base with almonds

This article was first published in the January/February 2018 issue of WIRED magazine